


Hardboiledstuck aka If Raymond Chandler Wrote Homestuck Fic

by kayliemalinza



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Detectives, Alternate Universe - Noir, Detective Noir, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-11
Updated: 2011-12-11
Packaged: 2017-11-02 08:51:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,367
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/367181
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kayliemalinza/pseuds/kayliemalinza
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Davesprite and his old lady, Dogtier Jade, have a nice little detective agency on the edge of town. Well, not "nice" so much as "weird and dusty", and definitely not the kind of place you expect this chilly Lalonde dame to walk into.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hardboiledstuck aka If Raymond Chandler Wrote Homestuck Fic

**Author's Note:**

  * For [gogollescent](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gogollescent/gifts).



> I read _The Big Sleep_ for research. If I were being super faithful about imitating it, this would just be Chapter One of a slim yet complicated plot. But I don’t know how to write plot, so just ~~use your imagination.

My old lady and I have an office in the dusty industrial corner of downtown, where twenty years ago factories churned out shiny plastic crap, and ten years ago churned out less, and five years ago folded in on themselves like paper bags in the rain. Our office building is the last brownstone on the block. When the neighborhood went industrial, the old coot living here refused to sell. By the time he died and his kids got their mitts on it, no-one wanted to buy. Except us.

To the left is a doll factory, there’s a fruit juice plant on the right, and the squat behemoth across the street used to spit out chainsaws and rotary blades. Behind us is a Skaianet laboratory. It’s empty like all the others, but we keep the back gate locked anyway. On hot days there’s a smell. Sometimes machinery clanks. My girl Harley says there’s something humming away in the basement all the time but I don’t hear it because I don’t have ears like a radio dish.

The neighborhood’s a graveyard of industry, but we like it that way. It’s quiet and roomy and inside the city limits. Most clients aren’t willing to hoof it to the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Not a lot of them hoof it here, either. Good thing my old lady has deep pockets, deep enough to keep me in. Maybe other men don’t like being kept; I’m an open-minded kind of guy. Besides, government disability forms don’t have a line for “severed wing” or “legs replaced by tailio.”

Lately detective work isn’t much different from being on the dole. I spend most of the day in the reception room on the ground floor glaring at the insides of my eyelids. By the time I decide they’ve got the message, the sunlight coming through the glass in the door is as orange as the goo leaking from under my bandages. If we don’t have a case, this is when my old lady will come out from the inner office and beg me for a walk. Walking isn’t really a thing I do anymore, but she asks cute and she owns the building. So I walk her.

Today, a shadow cuts a stripe through the orange, and the door opens. It’s a dame. We have a case.

She’s one of those blonde, translucent types: monied, leggy, expertly coiffed. A face too frigid to handle anything more boisterous than a smirk. She drags her flat, lavender eyes over the room and says, “This flawless adherence to the atmospheric demands of the genre speaks promisingly to your general dedication, though there is the worrying possibility that this milieu is merely an elaborate overcompensation.”

“The snooty broad convention is three blocks east,” I say. “You better make sure you have proof of invitation. I hear they’re particular.” I unwrap my tailio from the rungs of the chair and drift out from behind the desk. There’s not many things like me uptown.

This lady doesn’t bat an eyelash. “The signage indicates that these are the offices of Strider and Harley, private investigators,” she says coolly. She nods at the lettering on the pebbled glass in the door.

“You better calm down with the brilliant observations before you put us out of business,” I say.

The dame purses her lips like she’s holding something in her mouth and it’s trying to get out. “My name is Rose Lalonde,” she says. “You may have heard of me.”

That explains the translucency; the Lalonde family bleeds 80 proof.

“I’ll pay handsomely, of course.” She takes out her checkbook. Everyone else is on cash or plastic these days. She also takes out a fountain pen that cost more than my last bottle of hooch, so maybe she just likes to show off her handwriting. It’s hard to make a credit card receipt look elegant.

“Honey, slow down,” I say. “I need a little more info before we decide to take your case. If you have a case, that is. Could be you just came in here to get an eyeful.” I flap my good wing. Easy does it; I’m not trying to pirouette, here. That’s a private kind of demonstration.

“I’m here to see a dog about a cat,” says Lalonde. She says it like birds are scum. Can’t argue against that, exactly.

“That’s cute,” I say. “You want this sweet pussy tailed? Knocked off?”

“Jaspers is my pet cat. He’s missing,” says Lalonde. She leans down to spread her checkbook against the scratched-up desk. “I need you and Ms. Harley to find him. The future of the universe may depend on your help.” She writes a healthy number of zeroes before I can give my opinion on that. I shut my trap. It’s been a slow month and turntables don’t come cheap.

“Give me a moment to confer with my partner,” I say.

She stays arched over the desk, her elbow bent out into a pale, sharp point and her fingers crooked in the middle of the memo line. She stares at my glasses like she can see what I’m doing behind them. She can’t. I got an app for that.

TG: jade are you up for working today?

TG: babe wake up

The words float across Lalonde’s face. The orange font is hell against the sunlight streaming in so I put the dimmer on. Lalonde’s pale enough that it turns her straight gray. The glow around her edges is just a trick of the light, I’m sure.

I reach under the desk to ring the bell in the back office. Lalonde doesn’t take her eyes off my face, but she smiles. Dame’s a freak. I want her in the back room. Let her try to stare down my old lady. I met a blind girl, once, who nearly did it.

GG: oh my gosh i must have dozed off! but it’s not my fault this cushion is sooooo comfy!

TG: its cool i understand

TG: you got your little pillow and your blanket and a pile of squeaky toys

TG: itd take a saint to withstand that kind of soporific persuasion

TG: i can just imagine you with your nose in your armpit and your feet twitching from chasing bad dudes in a dream

TG: your ears swiveling around like a morpheus has direct tv and hes channel-surfing like a mofo

TG: its cute

GG: Dave you are making me blush!

TG: right lets be professional here

TG: i just thought youd like to know that i got a flighty broad out here waving money at me like i have my tailio wrapped around a stripper pole

GG: i’m not sure how i feel about that!

GG: okay now i’ve thought about it very seriously and it’s making me growly :(

TG: chill babe u know im ur one and only

TG: shes a client

TG: she says her cat is missing. i was gonna be a gentleman and direct her to the humane society but like i said shes waving a lot of money around

GG: no Dave we have to help her! I’ve been waiting for her for a long time. Poor Jaspers.

TG: how did you

TG: never mind

TG: so we’re takign the case?

GG: absolutely!

TG: then im bringing her back. hide your soggy milkbones okay we’re a class act

GG: roger that, partner!

“Stow that away; we’ll discuss fees later,” I say to Lalonde. “My partner wants to talk to you.”

Lalonde smirks in a different way than before, like her facial expression has to built from scratch each time. She caps her pen with a click and puts it and the checkbook back in her dainty, shell-shaped purse. It’s lavender and satiny, with metal corners. As practical as hoity-toity gets.

Before she closes it I notice a pair of knitting needles in there. I’ve never seen the striped kind before; Harley drags in enough artsy crap that I should have. Lalonde notices me noticing them and doles out Smirk #3. “My interests are, though admittedly concealed within the shallow fripperies of more mundane hobbies, far more esoteric than the petty pastimes in which I imagine most of your clients indulge themselves,” she says.

“You can have esoteric underwear for all I care,” I say. “All I need to know about is the case.” And the money. She could hand me the check wrapped around a goblet full of blood and I wouldn’t give a damn. You rub elbows with a lot of weirdos in this occupation.

I head into the back passageway and Lalonde follows. I take her the long way around to give my girl a chance to clean up. The brownstone didn’t come with multiple hallways like this, but Harley likes her renovation projects. She also likes _House of Leaves_ and the myth of the Minotaur. I like comic books. We get along swell.

Lalonde maneuvers her sharp heels between the suits of armor, stuffed game, mummies in formal-wear, etc. My old lady likes bric-a-brac. Some of these are from cases; some aren’t. Either way they’re a bitch to dust. Most weeks I don’t bother.

Lalonde notices. She flicks her eyes over each neglected surface like she can materialize a decent maid just by looking. Maybe she thinks her glare is hard enough to knock down the long fuzzy strings of dust. She’s a contender, but not a champion. I’ve seen harder eyes in the mirror.

Three feet past the Iron Man suit we hit a heavy oak door with a crystal knob. I knock and let the lady go in first to get the full effect.

The back of the building doesn’t face west like the front, but the Skaianet lab does and the bottom floor windows are one-way mirrors. We get all the reflected light; the chain link fence doesn’t stop much. It’s a bitch on afternoon naps but gives a nice theatrical effect.

Jade Harley, Dogtier Detective, sits at the desk with the windows at her back. All that’s visible is the square of her shoulders, the bulbous heft of her hair, those triangular ears. She’s a sweet silhouette. I’m not just saying that because she cooks my goose. She goods my gander. She greases my skillet. Then she fries up the goose and the gander in the skillet and we chow down. I like my gal an awful lot.

Lalonde isn’t the kind of woman who likes anything but she stops short anyway.

Something glints in the middle of the silhouette: green eyes or maybe teeth. A shadow hand gestures at the armchair before the desk. The thumb is streaked orange across the top. “Have a seat, Miss Lalonde. Mr. Strider, would you be good enough to mix the drinks?”

“Sure,” I say. “What’ll it be, Miss Lalonde?”

“Earl Grey,” says Lalonde. She sits. She’s gold all over, like King Tut’s death mask. She smiles the same way. Her eyes are muddy and still flat, like a sensible button.

“You want a dash of something in that?” I ask. She doesn’t answer, so I put in a dash of a lot. She could do with some loosening up.

For my old lady, I mix her usual: lime Kool-Aid and beef broth. It helps her think. It helps me reminds her to brush her teeth. I carry a gun for my gal and I carry breath mints, too.

I anchor myself to the silver-plated bird perch in the corner and put my apple juice on the bookshelf nearby. I don’t drink much anymore. I like to keep it simple.

Harley smacks her lips and smiles enough to show the Kool-Aid green on her teeth. Lalonde sips her tea and doesn’t notice the hooch.

“So,” Harley says. “Why don’t you tell us what’s on your mind?”

Lalonde sets her teacup down in the saucer with a clink and starts to talk. The stuff she comes up with sounds like it jumped right out of an absinthe bottle. Coming from a guy with wings, that says a lot.

My gal laps it up. She forgets her beef broth and nearly leans herself out of her chair. Harley never was too good at playing it cool. Conveniently she’s good at everything thing else. She asks questions that Lalonde is grateful to answer. This missing cat has a hell of a story.

I try not to listen too much. This whole thing give me a headache, one of those psychedelic migraines that’ll lay me out for a week if I let it. Harley can handle this. She knows where the headaches come from. She’ll tell me if I need to know something or not.

Lalonde’s purring voice and ridiculous grammar keeps on. I sip my apple juice and play Bejeweled on my iShades.

Finally Lalonde stands up and hands over the check from her hard-shelled, satiny purse. Harley sees her out to the street. I rinse out the glasses. Harley comes back and goes up on her red sparkly tip-toes to press her fingers to my temples. She rubs them in small circles until the trainwreck in my skull clears up. My gal is good to me.

“This whole thing is hinky,” I say. “It doesn’t sit right.”

Harley laughs. What the hell do I know about sitting? She runs my tailio over her palm once, twice, again. She’ll have me in knots in a minute.

“I know it seems confusing and scary right now,” she says, “but this case is really important, Dave! We need to start on it right away.”

“So what’s the first move, boss?” I ask.

“We need to check out the place where Jaspers disappeared,” she says. “The Lalonde home—before Rose gets back there. No time for walkies,” she adds solemnly.

“Alright,” I say. I get my katana from over the fireplace and shove it into my chest for safekeeping. “I guess we’re not taking a cab.”

Harley grins and curls her arms around me. It’s tricky getting a hug without the katana slicing anybody up, but my gal’s pretty competent. She’s had practice.

“Beam me up, Scotty,” I say.

My gal whisks us away in a flash.


End file.
